Tag: Easter

April 12, 2023 – Menudo’s Cousin: Meet Pozole

April 12, 2023 /

I think more people may be familiar with Pozole. It is a pork, hominy and chile soup. I think that it is more approachable in that the main meat portion of the dish is not tripe. As a preparer of menudo lately, I think it might be cheaper too.

My wife has generally refused to host pozole when making menudo is possible. But, I convinced her that this was something I wanted to do. It turns out that there are two types, red and green. I had never seen any other than red but it seems as though she didn’t know red existed.

We made pozole for Easter. I thought that probably the time economics of one big pot of soup beat putting some kind of meal together that included sides as well. I had one thing to shop for, one thing to prep and one thing to watch as it cooks.

I didn’t really read the instructions too carefully because once I saw the ingredients I knew how to make it. In fact, it is nearly exactly like making menudo with a few different ingredients. On Saturday afternoon, I put 7 lbs of pork hocks into the pot with 3 lbs dice pork tenderloin, two whole heads of garlic, 8 tablespoons of oregano and 6 quarts of water.

I very likely would have used half to no water if it were not for the fact that we were leaving for the evening. I didn’t want the meat to burn before the liquid was rendered out. When I make menudo, I don’t even add water to it. I turned the burner on to very low simmer. My goal would be to have the garlic dissolve, the meat fall off the bone but still have substance in the morning.

In the morning I added 3 lbs of cubed pork, 1 drained #10 can of hominy and the chiles. The original recipe called for 16 ancho chile (dried poblano chile). I felt that was a little light so I added the remainder of a bag of California chilis as well, about 20. Normally, if I wanted more flavor, I would add more of the same chile rather than mix them but ancho can have some spice to them and I was really trying to keep this spiceless.

There is a lot of mass here, the recipe was scaled to 16 quarts so salt to taste. It is going to take quite a bit of it but keep tasting, over salted soup is ruined. I know because I have done it multiple times and I sure don’t want to do it for Easter dinner.

After seasoning, let it all come together and prepare the garnish. Traditional garnish are tostadas, shredded cabbage, lime wedges, chopped white onion and sliced radish. In my house, we have to have both lime and lemon because some people prefer one over the other. I find lemon too bright and the sweeter lime is the right flavor as well as the authentic choice.

The way I made this, it was very mild. Many people like to spice it up a bit and so salsa or sliced chili peppers to add some heat could also be made. I skipped this preparation this time. I would have substituted menudo mix for some of the oregano if I had it on hand because it has chile pequin in it and it rather spicy. But, I didn’t want any leftover spices I wasn’t going to use for a while.

End Your Programming Routine: Who doesn’t like ham. We had it most Easter dinners throughout my life. I thought this twist was fun and delicious. I think it was a win on the effort front and I think that I convinced my wife that pozole is not the weaker cousin of menudo. It looks a lot the same and even tastes a lot the same, it just comes from a different family (of ingredients).

February 28, 2022 – Running Out of Words

February 28, 2022 /

No, I don’t mean that I am quitting. You will have to read to get to the punchline today. First, we have a long and winding path to get there, so let’s get started.

Valentine’s Day is over, so what is next for merchandizing? Why Easter of course. What does this have to do with anything? I am getting there.

When I first met my wife, I was introduced to something that I don’t see often. It is tradition called cascarón. This is where you save your egg shells be used for Easter. Essentially, you try to preserve as much of an intact eggshell by cracking off one end of the egg. You want to build up a large inventory of egg shells for coloring and filling.

This is where it get’s fun. Some of the shells are filled with confetti, flour or oatmeal and some might be filled with money and occasionally, there might even be a raw egg! What you do is run around and crack them on peoples heads. We hide them with traditional Easter eggs and then inevitably wait to get cracked. If you want to participate in this tradition, now is the time to start building up your inventory of eggshells.

You should know by now, I am going to take this a lot deeper. One of my first Easters with my Wife’s family was in 1995. We were going to school over 200 miles away and of course it was a school weekend and we had little means to travel so they came to us for the day. They brought the cascarones.

My wife was living in a townhouse with several exchange students. One of them was Japanese and this holiday was foreign. So, we invited her to join us for the meal and the Easter egg hunt. She brought a friend to the dinner whose name was Ai (also a Japanese exchange student).

After the dinner, and when it came to cracking eggs (by surprise is the best) they quickly caught on to what was likely going to happen. Ai got so freaked out that she ran to her bicycle and peddled away not to come back again that day. This was our Sophomore year and consequently my wife became really good friends with her Japanese roommate.

We have kept in contact with her roommate over all these years. Her roommate and Ai came to our wedding. Five years later, we all met at her roommate’s wedding in California. Ai studied theater in college and dreamed of Hollywood, which she pursued. Yesterday, Ai died of cancer.

We had heard that it was terminal a few months ago. In December, Ai left California to go back to Japan for her final days. To be honest, we weren’t nearly as close to Ai as we are to my wife’s roommate and dealing and our own demons concerning cancer, it was out of sight and out of mind. But, it hits that this was someone who we know that left us too early.

My wife deals with strong survivor’s guilt. She had a coworker who was our age and kids are the same age that died of cancer a few years ago, that was hard. They had even done chemotherapy at the same time. Then she had another friend who was younger than us by probably ten years die a couple years ago, that was worse. It feels like we know too many people battling and losing to cancer way too young.

I know, this is being hypervigilant. I see it one place and my eyes are open to where else it could be. But, I also can’t help but wonder what God is telling me in this situation. Not just me either, for people with survivor’s guilt as strongly as my wife’s what can she get out of the situation? Is there a message here, am I trying to make a connection that doesn’t exist or is this a fact of life that now I am getting older the probability to bad endings happen in life?

I talked about the neighbor kid that is battling last week, my mother-in-law is in her second year of treatment, people that are in my inner circle are in the fight of their lives. I’ve gone through it with my wife too. Compassion and empathy are some of my weaker areas for sure. I think I have them, but it is really difficult to express them adequately. Maybe that is what God is trying to tell me?

Yesterday in church, the sermon was conceptually about making the most of a situation (not necessarily dying). What can you do with what you have. The question of the bucket list came up. I had never really given it much thought because I have never created one. At least for me, I came down to goals and achievements are for the living. I don’t really have a traditional bucket list because I think that when that time comes, I wont want to have a final bunch of experiences before I die. I think the point of making the most of the situation actually means living before dying.

End Your Programming Routine: Of course, we are all going to face the inevitable. There is no doubt that if we live long enough, we will see our fair share of tragedy – however we define it. I suppose that I can consider myself lucky not having to witness something like the holocaust or to be born into slavery. With all things, it is not how we handle the acute situation, but the aftermath that is going to make the difference.

April 11, 2020 – Holy week is ending

April 11, 2020 /

We have wrapped up another Christian year with Easter tomorrow. This has been what is called holy week starting with Palm Sunday. The holy week timeline goes as follows.

Palm Sunday represents the day that Jesus arrived in Jerusalem. Thursday is supposed to be the last supper. Friday is the day of the crucifixion. Three days later, Jesus rose from the dead, which is Easter. That is a lot of things crammed into one week. I suspect that the actual timeline was a bit longer, particularly between arrest, conviction and death.

For those weaker on their doctrine, the resurrection of Jesus is God fulfilling his promise that the death of Jesus begins a new relationship between man and God. That is often referred to as the ‘New Covenant’. The old covenant was actually the Jewish religion. The difference between the two being that humans had relationship with God through a priest in the Jewish faith versus each person having relationship in the Christian faith. And with that, there is a shift between a fear, anger and punishment oriented God to a love and forgiveness God. At least this is my Protestant view of all that.

That makes tomorrow Easter, and traditionally a day of celebration. With the quarantine underway, we will be having a family oriented dinner, easter egg hunt, church on YouTube. It wont be the same, but it will be in line with tradition.

We are in the midst of our own new covenant. The state has decided not to reconvene school this year. With that, seniors are considered complete in their academic year. Our own exchange student who is a senior is now done with school. And with that, it is time to go home.

So the family dynamic which has grown so nicely over the year is about to change. We always knew that this day would come, it is a lot earlier than we expected and it certainly didn’t go the way that we expected. In a way we were lucky because we got a little more time with Sergio than a lot of host families did. Most programs recalled their students the week of spring break. He is the only exchange student that I am aware of that is still here.

Thursday morning, he will be on his way back home and we will be officially relieved of our duties take care of another child. We are all feeling a little sad about it. With that ending, another new beginning can occur. We will see what that is.